The de Young Museum presents "Rembrandt's Century," which plumbs the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's prints and drawings department, to provide context for the splendid "Girl With a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings From the Mauritshuis." Containing some 250 objects, it certainly succeeds in that.

I recently walked through the show with Achenbach curator James Ganz, who organized it and wrote its illuminating catalog.

Q:How did the idea for this show originate?

A: We started doing these complementary shows from the Achenbach with "Impressionist Paris: City of Light" in 2010. Then Karen Breuer did "Japonesque." These complemented "Orsay I" and "Orsay II," as we called them.

There was some uncertainty about whether to have this show at the Legion, as we did with the other two. The venue kept jumping back and forth, and I think the decision to do the show at the de Young was the right one because so many more people are seeing it than would have if we tried to separate the two.

Q:Is the show structured thematically like the catalog?

A: The catalog does not illustrate everything in it. Similar to the other two shows we've done, it has about half the works in the show.

The first problem was how do you deal with the entrance to the show? The problem with Rembrandt is that so many of his prints are small - they don't draw you in. So I decided to take Anthony van Dyck's "Iconography," a series of portraits - in this group, all artists, but there were other prominent figures of the time also represented in it - and put them in a grid. To me it suggests the infrastructure of the art world that Rembrandt was born into.

There are about 60 works by Rembrandt in the show, but obviously with a 250-object show, there's more "century" than Rembrandt. I think Rembrandt saw himself in competition with everybody, especially printmakers.

The whole point of making prints in the 17th century was to make a plate and get as many impressions out of it as possible. The idea of a limited edition just didn't exist then, although Rembrandt has been accused of making variations on prints for collectors who, if they'd bought one, would have to have the other.

Q:Are there sales records that track the history of some of these prints?

A: There are a few sales records, some auctions records, though they're not always specific enough to certify which print was being sold. We don't know much about private sales. Rembrandt for the most part seems to have sold his own prints.

He became rich from his portraits early on, not only paintings but etchings as well. One of the differences between Rembrandt's prints and van Dyck's is that van Dyck's are loaded with information - symbols, inscriptions. Rembrandt's seem to be more about the person, the psychology.

Q:Are there examples here of prints that Rembrandt might have owned?

A: There are a couple. He must have known these Jacques Callot prints. Pieter Jansz Quast clearly did. Some of his beggars are nearly rip-offs of Callot's. And Rembrandt takes up this theme as well.

It's amazing how many of these guys you see with a crutch, or a peg leg essentially, leaning on it. I found an article in some medical journal in which a couple of doctors wrote about the prevalence of this imagery, not just in Rembrandt's work and that of his immediate contemporaries but in French and Italian prints.

One of the questions is: Are they pretending that they can't walk so they can survive as beggars, or were there actual medical conditions that would result in people having just the use of a crutch or peg leg? I think the tendency now is to believe that these are not sympathetic images. Either they're condemning these people for their bad morals, or they're comic.

Q:Were the thematic headings intended to open a path for the inclusion of certain things that otherwise might not fit?

A: I suppose. I really wanted to show off the Adriaen van Ostades, because next to Rembrandt, he's the greatest etcher of the age in Holland.

We started receiving gifts of Ostade prints from collectors who've been making an ongoing donation. We're getting to the point where we'll have a world-class Ostade collection, and it's my hope that one day we'll be able to do an Ostade show.

Q:Does any single print here stand for Rembrandt's achievement?

A: I think his "Three Trees" is such an amazing object. It transcends the medium that it's done in. It's one of the great landscapes of Rembrandt regardless of medium. It's a print that's been loved by so many people, and there's so much literature on it, yet nobody to this day can agree on whether the storm is coming or going or what kind of trees those are.

The title itself is, like all of these titles, something that got put on it later on. We have no idea what Rembrandt called it. But it's just so full of detail and strangeness.

One of the conventions of landscape is that you have a draftsman sitting somewhere, but you don't put the draftsman facing out of the picture, which is what Rembrandt does here. It's almost impossible to see under 5-foot candles of light, but there is a couple there cuddling in the bushes. And the three trees - are they the Three Crosses? Is it a political thing? We don't know.

Then there are some issues in the sky. It may well be that this is a recycled plate that he started something else on and then decided to do this. The technique is very complicated.

There's etching, engraving, drypoint and a kind of tone probably created by applying acid directly to the plate, possibly in the form of a paste. Part of the print is dark, and there seems to be a micro-climate over here. It only exists in one state, so if there were proof impressions, he didn't let them out.

If you were to come into the Achenbach, I could show you 10 copies of this print, some of them flopped, some with lightning in the sky - a lot of artists saw this as something to emulate. {sbox}